BRUSSELS.- The artistic selection of the exhibition fulfils a specific intention: to choose artists from different backgrounds, making everyday use of anthropomorphic characters and figures. Anthropomorphism is a concept aimed at associating with man behaviours or physical characteristics peculiar to animals and vice versa.
The anthropomorphic image in the media expresses a collective reality often shared subconsciously. From there it draws part of its evocative power and explains why it reflects its era with such frankness. In the same vein, Raphaël Cruyt and Alice van den Abeele, the curators of the exhibition, invited artists who turn spontaneously to anthropomorphism in their work.
The second selection criterion is the complementary nature of the respective artistic paths followed in order to offer up an overview of contemporary anthropomorphism. The result is a choice of artists coming from the world of galleries as well as from graphic design, illustration, graffiti, tattooing and skateboarding. This plurality of points of view fits the spaces occupied by anthropomorphism in our culture. Because, since the middle of the 19th century, anthropomorphism has been inconspicuous in art exhibitions and predominant in the emerging media (comic strip, cartoons and advertising).
What portrait of 21st-century man emerges beneath the feathers of the characters in ZOO?
The anthropomorphic works of the 11 international artists depict a humanity remote from nature, superficial and often joyful.
Anthropomorphism is inspired by the visual legacy of mass pop culture such as cartoons, comic strip and graphic design. These media, which bear the hallmarks of marketing, are cultural products exemplifying the capitalist society of the 20th century. A brief analysis of them reveals the beliefs and interests that, with time, have shaped the individual of the millennium. The adoption of these aesthetic codes and the diverting of their original meanings in the works of ZOO offer up to the visitors’ gaze the image of a wild humanity.
Chapter VIII of the MIMA
By painting the portrait of millennium man, ZOO prefigures the next exhibition in September 2020 by Felix Luque, visual and digital artist, who creates a science fiction universe of a twilight techno society. The former is therefore a sort of stock-taking of humanity at a critical point in time in the Anthropocene, while the latter helps us to imagine what it could become. Are the two visions compatible? The artists Parra (NL), Pablo Dalas (FR), Egle Zvirblyte (LTU), Todd James (US), Gasius (UK), MARTÍ SAWE (ES), Steven Harrington (US), Ryan Travis Christian (US), Rhys Lee (AUS), Finsta (SW), Laurent Impeduglia (BE) The curators Alice van den Abeele & Raphaël Cruyt`.
